I should walk back my own comment a little. There are plenty of knowledgeable, cool and enthusiastic people there. The problem is the few people who are so superior and condescending in every post. It makes my teeth hurt.

I've seen the same thing in audiophile forums and message groups. Many of the participants have a product or service, and all their posts end up being promotional boosts to their own product, and negative tear-downs of all the competitors' offerings.

Its a crazy place. The only advice and tid-bits I ever pick up from there any more are practical, I almost never go there for gear recommendations or advice as there is always someone with an ax to grind or an agenda. Not everyone, but man its getting harder and harder to wade through the muck.

Back on track here, I met most of the Antelope guys at AES and got a run through of their gear, they make some sick stuff. They make a clock thats like $7-8k...for a master clock, and it looks like a piece of artwork to boot.

Also dollar for dollar their new Orion 32 is just amazing for how many channels of conversion you get for the price.

Oh and Mike, don't get me going on the audiophile forums...I have just started getting into Hi-Rez downloads and the guys at most of the audiophile forums are nuts!!! Its definitly a game for the rich to play.

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"I liken good ambient to good poetry ... enjoyable, often powerful, and usually unpopular" APK

I just got sucked into reading a few threads on Gearslutz. Wow, it's really amazing the lengths people will go to, trying to convince themselves that a certain piece of gear sounds better.

Every time someone does a blind listening test, it proves 90% of the preferences people have expressed are wishful thinking, and still, many people are willing (glad, even) to spend large amounts of money on equipment that can't possibly make any audible difference in their work.

That's why I sold my Cranesong HEDD. Yes, it made an "audible difference," but when I was honest with myself, the difference was not worth $3600 or whatever it was I spent on the thing... not even close.

The old law of diminishing returns. That last 5% costs you 1,000% more.And yet for most of the music people are recording it makes no significant difference at all.

Totally agreed. I have no problem with people paying for specialized or luxury goods that make them happy -- in that sense, they are "worth it" to them, even if we don't understand the value.

Where I have a problem is with gear that makes no audible difference, as proven in blind listening tests, when people argue even subsequent to this proof that the gear is better anyway. If it's better, it should at least be discernible in blind testing. Even if it IS discernible in blind testing, there's the question of whether the difference is worth the price.

Well the problem is we are biological beings, if we where digital beings I think it would be easier for us..cause then our subjective experience would be more consistent, it is just too many factors that vary now...

That's just it -- we are biological, and emotional. Our expectations and desires exert more powerful influence over our perceptions than we realize.

When I was in college, several of my friends got together to do a large and very extensive blind tasting of beer. We tried something like 20 beers, all unidentified at the time of tasting, and rated them. All my friends and I considered ourselves beer-drinking enthusiasts, and though we were relatively impoverished like all college students, we had tried many kinds of beer before, and had strong biases and preferences

There were a few examples of beer with very distinctive taste or smell or appearance, which people were able to guess. Generally though, we were all completely shocked at the number of premium or import beers which were rated very low, and the number of cheaper or no-name beers which rated very high. It was really eye-opening. In many cases, some of us rated beers that we THOUGHT we liked, very near the bottom.

This was when the microbrew and craft brewing phenomenon was just getting started, so the most premium beer you could buy in a bottle at that time was Sam Adams (and of course our test didn't involve draft beers, since it was conducted at my friend's house). For example St. Pauli Girl and Rolling Rock were both considered very premium beers at this time, and were rated among the lowest of all beers.

Blitz, which was the low-budget version of Henry Weinhard's, and Bohemian which was a borderline generic beer (not the expensive import of the same name) both rated very highly by everyone.

This was a really eye-opening experience for me, and all my friends too. There was no denying the fact that our preferences were based much less on taste, and more on brand perception, label, and other factors.

I believe the same is true of blind listening tests. Certainly different pieces of gear can have different sound. But very much of what we BELIEVE sounds different from one to the next is either no difference at all, or a difference so small that it can hardly be said to be worth paying for.

This isn't because people are assholes or dishonest or snobs (well, maybe a little bit of snobbery), but because of what I said above -- our expectations and desires exert more powerful influence over our perceptions than we realize.

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regarding hedd, are you just talking about the converter ?I think people do not buy it for that in first hand but for the processing...the processing elements are not so subtle..they are quite big. atleast from the samples I have heard.but to be honest I have not heard it in person...I might have the same experience as you, but as many of these tools the difference are in the metaphysical level, depends on how much focus you pay on the "small dots" where all dots represent a detail.

Again, I'm not saying the HEDD didn't sound different. Well, as a pure AD/DA without the harmonic effects stuff, I can't claim that I ever heard any improvement. The harmonic effects were noticeable, certainly. I never meant to argue that the HEDD 192 wasn't capable of coloring or shifting the sound. It was very subtle, though, and in the end, I was able to create more of a difference by running the signal through a piece of tube gear or applying a tiny bit of EQ.

There was a difference, but was it a $3,600 difference? Not for me. You can be all kinds of plugins that do similar things, and for my purposes, some of them are just as useful when it came down to actual sound -- not just expectations based on expense and exoticism.

As a reviewer and tech consultant I constantly have to do side by side comparisons and tests, and the reality is most of the time you are right Mike. The differences fall into the 10-15% category that most folks really would not care about. Now I am talking class vs class most of the time as its unfair to compare an old soundblaster card to an Orion 32 or whatever. I have heard the Orion 32, Apogee Symphony 64, Aurora, UA 2192, Lavry Gold, Pacifics Microsonics and a few others and its all really a 10% - 15% sonic difference. I could happily record with any of them and never look back.

Since this thread centers around plug-ins...or did. I have done real world side by side comparisons of most of Universal Audio's wares and they come scarily close to the real thing and the differences is really just the anomalies of air, noise and harmonic distortion present in the hardware that give that slight edge. In other words high end plug-in modeling is getting scary good.

Having said that when possible I will always choose the hardware to work with as I do find the effects of high end, analog gear to be cumulative, IE one high end piece will not make a ton of difference and save your butt so to speak, but a good collection of the right high end pieces can, but really high-end or low-end. It all about having the right collection of pieces that give you the results you want, and secondly get you the results you want when others hear your work.

In all my years of recording the 2 most significant times when my ears perked up and I went ahhhh, I hear it! I get it! were:

1. when I treated my room and put my monitors on Prime acoustics recoil stabilizers2. When I ran sound through a real hardware La-2a

PV

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"I liken good ambient to good poetry ... enjoyable, often powerful, and usually unpopular" APK

In all my years of recording the 2 most significant times when my ears perked up and I went ahhhh, I hear it! I get it! were:

1. when I treated my room and put my monitors on Prime acoustics recoil stabilizers2. When I ran sound through a real hardware La-2a

PV

I had been wondering about the Prime Acoustic Stabilizers, seen them everywhere and heard good thing but from no one I knew and who's point of view I respect. Treating ones studio is really the best thing you can do for your sound. It requires little effort unless you choose to make your own panels, minimum knowledge, because the "where to place the panels" info is all over the web and it does not have to be a big investment.

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"Life is one big road, with lots of signs, so when you ride to the Roots, do not complicate your mind, ... " Bob Marley